The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion (Vol. 1 of 2)Frazer, James George
Religion
The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion (Vol. 1 of 2)
Frazer, James George
Magic; Mythology; Religion; Superstition
Sometimes the lost soul is brought back in a visible shape. In Melanesia a
woman knowing that a neighbour was at the point of death heard a rustling
in her house, as of a moth fluttering, just at the moment when a noise of
weeping and lamentation told her that the soul was flown. She caught the
fluttering thing between her hands and ran with it, crying out that she
had caught the soul. But though she opened her hands above the mouth of
the corpse, it did not revive.(442) The Salish or Flathead Indians of
Oregon believe that a man’s soul may be separated for a time from his body
without causing death and without the man being aware of his loss. It is
necessary, however, that the lost soul should be soon found and restored
to the man or he will die. The name of the man who has lost his soul is
revealed in a dream to the medicine-man, who hastens to inform the
sufferer of his loss. Generally a number of men have sustained a like loss
at the same time; all their names are revealed to the medicine-man, and
all employ him to recover their souls. The whole night long these soulless
men go about the village from lodge to lodge, dancing and singing. Towards
daybreak they go into a separate lodge, which is closed up so as to be
totally dark. A small hole is then made in the roof, through which the
medicine-man, with a bunch of feathers, brushes in the souls, in the shape
of bits of bone and the like, which he receives on a piece of matting. A
fire is next kindled, by the light of which the medicine-man sorts out the
souls. First he puts aside the souls of dead people, of which there are
usually several; for if he were to give the soul of a dead person to a
living man, the man would die instantly. Next he picks out the souls of
all the persons present, and making them all to sit down before him, he
takes the soul of each, in the shape of a splinter of bone, wood, or
shell, and placing it on the owner’s head, pats it with many prayers and
contortions till it descends into the heart and so resumes its proper
place.(443) In Amboina the sorcerer, to recover a soul detained by demons,
plucks a branch from a tree, and waving it to and fro as if to catch
something, calls out the sick man’s name. Returning he strikes the patient
over the head and body with the branch, into which the lost soul is
supposed to have passed, and from which it returns to the patient.(444) In
the Babar Islands offerings for evil spirits are laid at the root of a
great tree (_wokiorai_), from which a leaf is plucked and pressed on the
patient’s forehead and breast; the lost soul, which is in the leaf, is
thus restored to its owner.(445) In some other islands of the same seas,
when a man returns ill and speechless from the forest, it is inferred that
the evil spirits which dwell in the great trees have caught and kept his
soul. Offerings of food are therefore left under a tree and the soul is
brought home in a piece of wax.(446) Amongst the Dyaks of Sarawak the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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